Asian Critical Theory and Counternarratives of Asian American Art Educators in U.S. Higher Education

Abstract

This article is a collective counternarrative of seven Asian American art educators in higher education in the United States. Critically reflecting on their research and pedagogical practices, we attempt to recognize and address the voices and challenges of Asian Americans in the field of art education. We employed Asian Critical Theory as a theoretical framework, combined with collaborative autoethnography as a research methodology. Confronting racial stereotypes and discrimination against Asian Americans, we underlined the voices of Asian American art educators whose linguistic and cultural values are in stark contrast with those of mainstream American art educators. After reflecting on our shared stories and experiences, we suggest a new pedagogical approach, “Asian Critical Pedagogy,” to redress and transform our experiences to attain the broader goal of racial and social justice in the field of art education.

Acknowledgments

The authors are listed in alphabetical order as they have contributed equally, except for the first author who led this research project and report.

Notes

1 According to the nonprofit organization STOP AAPI Hate’s national report in May 2021, a total of 6,603 hate incidents targeting Asian Americans nationwide had been recorded within 1 year from the start of the pandemic in March 2020 (Jeung et al., 2021).

2 In this article, we follow Ferguson’s (2003) definition of reflexivity as “the ability to act in the world and to critically reflect on our actions and in ways that may reconstitute how we act and even reshape the very nature of identity itself” (p. 199).

3 By applying the collaborative autoethnography, this is the first publication in art education journals in which Asian American art educators collectively address our concerns in art education communities in the United States. Although we collectively address our concerns, each of us identifies as an Asian American art educator in different ways based on our experiences and backgrounds. For instance, we had a debate to define what the term “Asian American art educator” means. Some of us who already have U.S. citizenship would prefer to be called Asian Americans. Three participants prefer to be called Asian immigrants because they still keep citizenship in their motherland. Regardless of our identities as either Asian Americans or Asian immigrants, we found that our identities are intersected by academic background, ethnicity, gender, geography, language, and immigration status.

4 White European scholarly traditions are grounded by the ideology that the White Euro American race, its thoughts, and its epistemology have created and normalized worldviews for themselves and for others. All others are forced to submit to Euro American epistemology as their master narrative by subjugating their native ways of knowing. This is called epistemological racism, which means that White racial hegemony signifies a social hierarchy based on skin color, phenotype, ethnicity, and culture for the purpose of showing the superiority or dominance of one group over another (Han, 2014; Yang, 2002).

5 White settler pedagogy views the construction of non-White peoples as less than or not-quite civilized, an earlier expression of human civilization, and makes Whiteness and White subjectivity both superior and normal (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013).

6 All author (participant) names in this article are pseudonyms.

7 Western and Eurocentric master narrative frameworks perpetuate and refresh colonial relationships among people and view knowledge as property. The framework is told solely through a White male lens, although it purports to unify society under the ideals of progress and freedom. Within this narrative framework, however, one can find the seeds of division, prejudice, and injustice (DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2019).